The invention relates to a packing system for unit loads which can be stacked in a plurality of adjacent piles or piles stacked on top of each other to form a substantially stable pile consisting of at least two stacked layers of unit loads.
The unit loads to be considered are plastic foam boards, used primarily in the construction industry for cushioning or insulation. Typical sizes for these boards for the construction sector are approximately 600 mm wide and approximately 1250 mm and 2500 mm long, due to the standard dimensions established in that sector. The boards are approximately 20 to 200 mm thick, bundled together in packages of between 300 mm and 420 mm in height (predominantly 400 mm). In the specification that follows, reference is made to these dimensions, which are customary in the construction sector, but without restricting the invention to these dimensions.
After production, the packages of foam boards, packaged in shrink film, are bundled together in over-sized units and placed in storage. Deliveries to building materials merchants and construction sites are made using large capacity trucks, with the packages resting on battens or directly on the loading surface (FIG. 1).
At the merchant's premises or the construction site, the products are usually unloaded manually, i.e. the entire load is removed from the cargo space separately package by package. The reasons for this manual unloading procedure are as follows:
While it is true that the packages may be atop battens, special stackers with long prongs or fork attachments are rarely available. The blocks, which it would be possible to unload with long stacker prongs, are too large for internal materials handling. Their height (e.g. 3 m) precludes the possibility of simply commissioning from these large units. In order to remove the uppermost packages from such a block, a ladder or some other form of assistance is needed. The units, as delivered, cannot simply be transferred onto the usual delivery vehicles, whose maximum loading height ranges from approximately 2 to 2.5 m.
The underlying task of the invention is to further refine a packing system for unit loads according to the preamble to claim 1 in such a way that a minimal expenditure of effort for implementing all handling procedures involving the unit loads, from their manufacture to their utilization at the construction site, should be made possible.